Never talked to Alison about what happened that night. If I’d thanked her, she would have denied it. Plus maybe laugh in my face, give me one of those haughty shikse turnoffs: “The very thought of it makes me want to barf!” Better not say anything.
CHAPTER TWELVE
EVERY TIME WE SAY GOODBYE, I DIE A LITTLE
Late December, 1984
A last go-around with things you take for granted; until it hits you that pretty soon you’re never going to see them again. My left large toe, for instance. Always favored it over the right, seeing as it has this little tuft of hair growing out of it. Also, the knob growing out of my right wrist, the one I fell on as a kid.
My penis I never took for granted. I have to make my goodbyes there too. To those of you who own one, I don’t have to tell you how preoccupied you can get with it. Men are always zeroing in on where it’s been, where it is at any given moment, and where it’s wandering to next. Tied up like I was, I didn’t have much of a chance to commune with it. Sort of lost touch. Still, I’m sad this is the end of our relationship. We’ve been through so much together.
And then there are the objects – they call them “inanimate,” but to me they have an identity all their own. My stainless steel urinal for instance, the one with the little yellow dents in it, that’s always ready for me at the side of my bed. Also, the electric clock on the wall, and the rocking chair Alison sits in, from which she sends off her Underskirt Factor. And the smokestack I can see through my window, always puffing out a white vapor, like they’re electing a new Pope every day of the week.
Not to speak of the Horowitz twins. Tuned in to their program for what was bound to be the last time. It couldn’t have been a better sendoff. Featured a lipstick for those “other lips.” They had the inventor of a gadget called “Labistik,” Elle Majora was her name, as a guest on the program. It looked like a regular lipstick – just a lot longer – with a little mirror like the one dentists use coming out of one side. Inventors are always out to find things they want the public to think they need. Ms Majora summed it up. “So the lap-dancer hidden away in every woman has a chance to come out.” Big ovation and stamping of feet from the studio audience. I don’t have any personal experience with that kind of cosmetics; at least as far as I know. Whenever I plunge under the blankets in the dark, I never come back to the surface with smudged lipstick on my face.
The Horowitz twins don’t endorse products on their show. That’s how they keep their scientific integrity. But the one in blue – Dr Melissa – was starting to get that look in her eye; like where’s the nearest Labistik franchise? Dr Samantha was staying neutral. Put on the puss she must use to announce to somebody they’re going to have septuplets – dead serious, no crapping around. If the viewers couldn’t make up their minds, her look suggested, why not talk it over with their clergywoman or their vaginal esthetics advisor? Whatever – I feel sad about never keeping company with the Horowitz twins again.
I’m up to a minute at a time of no breathing, together with pushing down at the same time, which brings my pulse down to the high thirties. Giving me a feeling like my head got unscrewed from my neck. All of which means, the next time the suicide center sends out its message, the rest of me will be ready, willing and able to deliver the goods.
Sure enough, early this morning, I’d just turned the radio on. For what is going to happen very soon, the music was appropriate. “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” played by the Marine Corps, Army, and Navy bands. For some reason, the Air Force band had flown the coop. Anyway, that’s when I felt that rush again, every part of my body on alert, like it was waiting for something to happen. My ears ringing and my scalp itching, like I ran out of anti-dandruff shampoo. Too much going on for me to do a last-minute check on if I was really going to go through with this. Went right to the breath-holding and the Valsalva. All that training was paying off. After a couple of minutes, the monitor and the clock told me my pulse was down to the low thirties. That’s when I started to feel schwarz far die oigen (trans: ready to keel over.) But, since I’m lying down in bed, the blood keeps coming to my head. Meaning I still know what’s going on; at least for a little while yet. So I can find out what dying is really like.
I’m pushing down hard, taking a breath here and there. No revelations yet. I’m starting to feel kind of warm and fuzzy, like those explorers when they’re ready to freeze to death. Can’t see the clock or monitor anymore, but estimate my heart rate is about twenty-five. Waiting for something to happen. Meanwhile, all these thoughts keep horning in. Not the kind that are up to the level of the occasion.
What I keep thinking about is banal stuff, considering the seriousness of the occasion. Like the logistics of my funeral. They’re bound to do it at the Fred Cummings Funeral Chapel, on Madison and 75th. Nice limestone building. A specialist doorman out front, “Mourner Greeter” imprinted on the front of his top hat. Around the corner, on a side street, the takeaway entrance (and exit) for the mourned. In the old days, Riverview Chapel, on Amsterdam in the West 70s, was where anybody Jewish who was somebody, went when they went. In more recent times, people of the Hebrew persuasion – the way we’re treated, believe me, we need to be persuaded – get a 48-hour guest membership at Cummings. Only two requirements: you have to have an up-to-date death certificate, and somebody – in my case, the Department – has to be flush enough to come up with the funds. Still, I wouldn’t recommend they bury the Lubavitcher Rebbe from there. I mean, hundreds of recruits from Yeshiva boot camps swarming all over Madison Avenue, tearing at their clothes. Bouncing up and down, pounding their chests, while they’re waiting to hand-carry the coffin across the Triborough Bridge to Beth Deth, the Chasidic cemetery off the Long Island Expressway. Almost as bad as Puerto Rican Day, when the eponymous insist on barbecuing on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum. What I’m trying to say is, being laid out at Cummings is more for “moderate Jews.” No throwing yourself in front of the coffin, making them roll it over you to get it out the door. Above all, no wailing or screaming. Although a medium loud geschrei, a mix of sobbing and kvetching about the untimely removal of the mourned, is permitted.
Also, will The Chief cancel the operating schedule so they can have the funeral on a weekday? Or will they keep me on the rocks until Sunday, so they can sandwich the obsequies in between The Times early in the morning, and the football game in the afternoon?
And don’t forget the dress code. For sure, yarmulkes all over the place; The Chief, and the whole Department wearing them. With neurosurgeons, seems to me “skullcap” is a more appropriate term. Jews wear theirs in a kind of throwaway style. Casual, slipping this way or that; no big deal. But put them on Gentiles for funerals, weddings, whatever, then it’s a whole other story. Once they put them on, they’re afraid to take them off. Don’t want to do the wrong thing. While Jews, most of the time, can’t wait to get rid of them. Ends up a big mishmash, with the Gentiles looking devout, and the Jews looking like Gentiles.
Also, there’s the fledglings. Wouldn’t it be appropriate for them to wear black scrub suits when they pay their last respects to the guy who kept them out of trouble, day in, day out? Like sporting a black armband.
And here’s my biggest concern: how is it going to be with Alison? Will she just be dabbing at her eyes, all the time stealing looks at her watch? Figuring she’d done her bit with the anonymous blowjob, now we were even?
It’s a fact: plenty of people (including myself) fret over how their funerals reflect on their popularity. Either their prestige has always been on the high side, so what happens at their funeral is just more of the same. Or they were always in a low self-esteem category, and this is their very last chance to shine. (Rising being out of the question by now.) You don’t even have to be dying, to wonder how many are going to make how much of a geschrei when you kick the bucket. For most people, it’s a lifelong worry.
Meanwhile, there’s something else on my mind: my grave. It’s not what kind of a stone they’re going
to pick, or what’s going to be chiseled on it. None of that stuff; I couldn’t care less. But what does upset me, is what I’m just starting to remember now. The ground rules laid out in a fancy document, the Protocols of the Elders of Mt Zion. Something in it about suicides having to be buried outside the cemetery walls; no exceptions. That was all well and good in the old days, when graveyards sat in the middle of the countryside. But Mt Zion Cemetery happens to be chock- a-block with Route 22, in New Jersey, one of the busiest commuter arteries. Strictly speaking, it’s an artery in the mornings, when it feeds New York City, and a vein in the evenings, when it drains it. If you get buried outside the walls, it’s got to be under Route 22. Traffic jams, with people throwing their cold McNuggets right on top of my remains. Followed by chasers of cold coffee poured out of those Styrofoam cups.
Now I’m down to fifteen beats a minute, give or take a couple. The warm and fuzzy is just plain fuzzy by now. I’m starting to think it may be a mitzvah (trans: a good deed that’s not tax deductible) for people to die, not knowing what’s going on. Because for me – at least so far – the experience has been miserable. I mean, pedestrian thoughts superimposed on feeling more and more like shit.
And still, these practical concerns. All of a sudden, I’m thinking of the books I’m leaving behind. My clothes, I couldn’t care less about. Anybody who wants my chinos and hushpuppies, plus a few shirts and sweaters, is welcome to them. But my books, I feel like I’m abandoning them. That I thought only of myself when I got that laser shot at me. What’s going to become of them now? It’s as if you have pets at home. A couple of dogs, a few cats, and maybe a bird or a goldfish. With the space situation in Manhattan being what it is, who’s going to take them in when you die? Nobody I know has extra room for a couple of thousand books. Besides, it’s like your dog bites, and the bird is always getting pneumonia. My books aren’t exactly what you’d call “mainstream.” They’re not the kind you can spend your evenings curled up on the sofa with. I can just see them being dumped on the street, nobody there to rescue them, waiting for the garbage truck. But some of them could even be bound for a worse fate. Ripped off in the middle of the night by some homeless guy, and assigned to latrine duty. All I can say is, the whole thing makes me very sad. I wish Alison was here right now, so she could at least plant a kiss on me before I die.
By now, I’m really bummed. Went to all this trouble, and I don’t know one bit more about this dying business than before I started. I’d have liked at least a hint that something good is going to happen afterwards. A little wink, maybe a friendly voice that says “Bubbele, it’s OK. Be a little patient, and you’ll see how great the afterlife can be.” But nothing, nothing at all? Is this worth getting myself knocked off for?
Makes me seriously wonder if I should have fooled with Mother Nature. Go do hocus-pocus with the only game in town, namely living. You end up like me. No girl, no life, no Fido Teitelbaum Professorship. Just a no-sense-of-humor Valsalva Maneuver that’s about to do me in any minute.
Can’t drag this out much longer. My heart is beating so slow, it feels like it’s just trembling. Now I’m seeing that banner again. “The Song is Over, But the Melody Lingers On” is what it says. Sending me a hopeful message, with maybe positive possibilities for the future. To which I’m going to squeeze out my last words ever:
It should only be…
THE END
Acknowledgments
Kisses to my grandchildren, Nico and Allia, for the intense interest they have shown in their Opi’s writing. My thanks to my sons Paul and John and my daughter-in-law, Yasmin Hai, for critical readings of the manuscript and ever helpful suggestions. I am thankful to my daughter-in-law, Michèle Blair, for her encouragement and support. Tariq Goddard believed in this book from the beginning, and his benevolent critique nudged me into doing my best to justify his judgment. For that, I am deeply grateful. Thanks to Josh Turner, who was responsible for the coherent copy editing and beyond. Kudos to Johnny Bull, for his inspired cover. Thanks also to Lucy Ellmann. My gratitude to my stepson Mark Brewin and his wife Georgette, who first put me on the trail of Tariq Goddard. My loving appreciation to my wife Helen for reading and listening to various versions of this work over the past years. She has helped even more than she knows.
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